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Re: My semicasual/semicompetitive budget Legacy decks

Originally Posted by Tiago_B.

Might be better to write a small explanation on how each deck works, makes it easier to understand and comment about it.

OK

All these decks are sort of aggro-control type.

Red one and green one are almost twins. They both use direct damage from deathtouch creatures to control board and both suspend beaters as middle/late game decisive factor. They are also able to finish opponents via direct damage.

Green deck is more sophisticated: able to recover from creature destruction with treefolks and play around almost any blockers with lure-licids. Licid + Basilisk is an old and primitive, but efficient way to deal with most opponent's creatures including protection (one point though: changeling ability protects, because the Basilisk's text says "non-wall"). Mass killings of manaelves and rangers (Pyroclasm) slow it terribly - this is the weakest point.

Red deck is more resilient vs mana-denial and early mass killings, but cannot recover in late game. It is more or less old-style Geeba-Sligh upgraded for new creature's power-creep with deathtouch and maintains ability to interact in late game nevertheless. Equipped deathtouching first-strikers and Fury Charms (i.e. defacto Shatters) can face popular Stoneforge Mystic strategies based on Batterskull. Protection can be answered by Flaring Pain or boosted colorless morphs (trample + deathtouch) and flyers. Martyr answers weenies, tokens (EtW, Bridge), elves, goblins or whatever, and has decent synergy with own suspends and flyers. From my experience in Forge, Vault Skirges over Brass Gnats is not an improvement here.

Black deck is probably the weakest one vs aggro, but contains best answers vs combo and also decent late-game strategy reusing graveyard vs control. Most of the time it wins with flyers. Thoughtpicker Witch is the key card vs top-deck tutors, Brainstorms and Doomsday, and to reuse Skinthinners. Skinthinner looks sub-optimal, but it is the best way to deal with Iona-based color lock.

White deck is the hardest one to play correctly. Its strategy relies on resolved Restore Balance + sacrifice to Spawning Pit and tapping opponent's threats. Good timing with Timebugs is crucial, especially if opponents plays counterspells. This deck loses horribly to classic monored Legacy Goblins and sometimes struggles to survive without its key cards.

Re: My semicasual/semicompetitive budget Legacy decks

Thank you for sharing your decks.

While I understand the concept of "budget" and "casual", there are plenty of dirt cheap yet better cards that you could use in your decks to fill the same strategies. In particular, the mana curves look quite high for low land counts. Some of your decks run resistors (e.g. Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst) but also have their own high casting cost cards or activation costs. Doesn't that create mana difficulties? Or maybe it doesn't relative to the other decks, but I bet changing the curves and land counts would help your lists run more smoothly.

Example:
You're running the old Thicket Basilisk + Tempting Licid combo to kill all of opponent's blockers. But there are so many cheaper deathtouch creatures these days. For example Wren's Run Vanquisher is pretty cheap for you considering you run some Elves, would be even more reliable with more Elves in the deck. Or you could run Ambush Viper, which doubles as a combat trick. True, Thicket can kill any number of creatures (unlike a 2-power deathtouch creature that can only kill 2), but it's still very expensive for a 2/4. The Thicket combo also doesn't deal with creatures that are already tapped (from attacking or activated abilities). It also really raises your curve to have Basilisk as a 4-of along with other expensive creatures like Deadwood Treefolk and Penumbra Spider. Yes, you have mana acceleration, but 8 mana elves+18 lands still doesn't make it easy to cast them early. These days Green can blow up a lot of creatures using deathtouch and Ulvenwald Tracker or other cheap fight effects like Pit Fight. You can give arbitrary creatures deathtouch with Nightshade Peddler, including any regenerator (River Boa) or indestructible creature (Phantom Centaur, Predator Ooze) or fatty so you can repeatedly make it fight things and live. Meanwhile, these cards are easier on your curve. Also, suspending Durkwood Baloth is pretty bad when you can just spend 3 mana for Leatherback Baloth. Green power creep means waiting several turns for a green fatty is not necessary.

Re: My semicasual/semicompetitive budget Legacy decks

Indeed there is a lot of room for alternatives.

In particular, the mana curves look quite high for low land counts. Some of your decks run resistors (e.g. Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst) but also have their own high casting cost cards or activation costs. Doesn't that create mana difficulties? Or maybe it doesn't relative to the other decks, but I bet changing the curves and land counts would help your lists run more smoothly.

Green deck runs manaelves as accelerators and contains almost no non-creature cards, so Thorn of Amethyst affects opponent more. Early mass killings pose huge problem as I have already mentioned. Originally I tried only 16 lands and it was unacceptable. 18 is right count IMO.

White deck runs Guardian Idols and no really mana-expensive cards or abilities. Sphere can prevent own unwanted suspended Balance, if opponent eliminates Pits and Timebugs from operation. 4 Spheres were too much and created unpleasant situations sometimes, 4 Mana Tithes made the deck too reactive and were almost useless in late game. 2/2 split is right compromise here.

Red and black decks run a few storage lands each. Red deck contains 1 mana-expensive card (red Akroma), but it doesn't matter that much as she is usually played facedown and turned up much later or never. She is here more or less as a surprise and joke for Show and Tell. Red deck has rarely problems with mana.

OTOH, black deck has huge problems with mana quite often. Grimclaw Bats and Skinthinner have really mana-intesive abilities to compete with more efficient modern creatures and as consequence Grim Harvest is either usually lost or its graveyard ability forces me to keep wasting 3 free mana each turn. Bats were intended to become main kill machines utilizing all abundant black mana (with no fetchland thinning), but paying life can be painful in open damage race vs aggro, so I usually end up playing in defense. I have some ideas how to fix it, but I would have to buy/trade cards a bit first as these decks are intended to be built from real paper cards.

You're running the old Thicket Basilisk + Tempting Licid combo to kill all of opponent's blockers. But there are so many cheaper deathtouch creatures these days. (...)

Deathtouch doesn't work vs first strike and vs protection (and damage prevention in general). True-Name Nemesis, Progenitus and Sphinx of the Steel Wind are too popular to be ignored. Viable alternatives for Thicket are: Tangle Asp and Sylvan Basilisk. Compared with Thicket, both have their pros and cons. True, Tangle Asp is much easier to cast and destroys changelings/walls, but it is too prone to red burn and is too small to survive as blocker - trades 1:1 here. Sylvan is excellent in attack - kills before combat damage, but doesn't trigger on defense. Moreover, I have some doubts about Sylvan Basilisk's rulings: text says destroy blocking creature, not all blocking creatures. Thicket has best synergy with Quirion Ranger's ability from these three, but IMO Tangle Asp would be worthy to try.

The Thicket combo also doesn't deal with creatures that are already tapped (from attacking or activated abilities).

Creatures tapped from attacking may become untapped by Ranger and smaller creatures with activated abilities are usually killed by damage from the Longbow equipment.

Also, suspending Durkwood Baloth is pretty bad when you can just spend 3 mana for Leatherback Baloth. Green power creep means waiting several turns for a green fatty is not necessary.

That is the question! Suspend is easy to pay and puts additional psychological pressure on opponent.

For Sui-Black, I'm confused how Yotian Solider (a defensive card) and Grimclaw Bats (a slow mana sink) count as "beatdown". Why not just run 4 Dark Ritual and churn out aggressive threats like Vampire Lacerator, Carnophage, Skittering Skirge, Dauthi Slayer, Dauthi Horror, Rakdos Cackler, Diregraf Ghoul, Ashenmoor Gouger, Vampire Nighthawk or anything else like that? You can still back that up with a similar discard plan and creature removal via Snuff Out and Shriekmaw. Or if you want a more disruptive angle, you can run Chittering Rats to wreck the opponent's draws for the rest of the game.

I agree that the black deck needs complete revision, because it performs really bad just now. But surprisingly, Yotian Soldier is decent creature here and replaced Black Knights, because he acts both as blocker and attacker at the same time and survives Pyroclasm or Cursed Scroll.

Re: My semicasual/semicompetitive budget Legacy decks

Shriekmaw seems like a straight up upgrade for your morph. Cheaper removal if you need removal earlier; better beater once you have the mana.

If you run more efficient black creatures (e.g. all 1-3 cc other than Shriekmaw), then Unearth is a much better reanimation spell than spending 5 mana on Grim Harvests. The recursion isn't worth the slowness. There's also Phyrexian Reclamation if you want repeatable effects. Harvest has awful synergy with your deck since you want to tap out for the bats and equipment, but you need to keep 3 mana open at all times for Grim Harvest to avoid it getting exiled. If you had more efficient beaters, you wouldn't need to waste mana on the bats too. The Dauthi cycle is pretty decent for cheap unblockable budget black attackers. Equipment on a Dauthi ends on the game quickly, with your mana open to cast spells and interact with the opponent.

Yotian Solider works on defense, but a sui-black deck doesn't need to be defensive with creatures. You have access to more efficient, more aggressive creatures than many other decks. Black can play better defense by destroying creatures than by blocking. Creatures that can't be destroyed by spells (e.g. protection from black, protection from everything) often can't be stopped by blocking anyway. Yotian Solider also doesn't block flyers (Delver, Clique, Spirit tokens, Flickerwisp, etc.). If you run better removal and more aggressive creatures, I think you'll find you no longer need the 1/4 to block. Not like it really stops Batterskull or Tarmogoyf anyway.

If you're playing against slow casual decks it may not be a big deal, but otherwise I think you're underestimating how slow 5cc creatures and 3-mana equip costs are when you have few lands. 18 lands + 8 fragile Elves is not enough to speed that up consistently (unless the decks you're facing lack removal or are also slow and/or you're not properly randomizing your deck). I would look at recent Standard midrange manabases from the last few years. Many of those decks (e.g. RG Monsters) run mana elves but will also run closer to 24-26 lands to help them consistently play their many powerful 5-drops. There's nothing wrong with 5-drops and 6-drops, especially in a casual environment, but many other constructed formats have proven they're much easier to consistently cast with at least 24 lands. Legacy Elves run around 18 lands, but they also have Gaea's Cradle, more mana Elves, and a significantly lower overall mana curve. Perhaps something to keep in mind.

You can also just lower your curve by running tutors (e.g. Worldly Tutor, Mwonvuli Beast Tracker) instead of having 4-ofs all your fatties. That way you still have as easy access to them but your overall mana curve isn't clogged up with so many expensive cards.

Sylvan Basilisk triggers for each creature that blocks it, so each individual trigger will destroy a different blocking creature (without targetting it). In case you were wondering about the rules. But Walls and Changelings are rarely played so it doesn't have much of an edge. Although you can theoretically kill TNN and Progenitus, you're not playing any haste enablers. Therefore, opponent will have an entire turn between you casting a Basilisk and you being able to attack with it. That means opponent can just attack with their TNN/Progenitus to avoid getting them killed. Meanwhile, you spent 5 mana on a 2-power creature and more mana on a Licid, so chances are they are just plain outracing you. I seriously doubt the Basilisk plan is actually helping you win games against TNN in practice. Those decks also run a number of counterspells and removal spells to disrupt your "combo" for much less mana than you invest in it. So they have multiple lines of play to get around it. With all that said, I doubt the Basilisk combo is helping you win games against those protection cards. Maybe it helps you win games against casual decks with "protection from green" and lots of "first strike" creatures, so there is potential merit there over just running more deathtouch. But 4 copies is probably too many.

In a green deck, Suspending a 5/5 is powerful and potentially scary if done on turn 1. Every later turn of the game, it becomes the worst topdeck ever. What might be a psychological advantage against easy-to-intimidate mediocre plays is more often an information disadvantage against a better opponent. For those turns it is suspended, you are playing with -1 card in hand and they know exactly what is coming and when so they can time their plays and plan out their next turns appropriately. Personal choice I guess. There's merit to running the suspenders in your other colors, but green just has so many cheap fatties already...

With a high enough creature count, your green deck could benefit from card draw like Lead the Stampede. Refuelling after mass-removal is good. You probably don't need card draw yet since your curve is so high that you're playing at most 1 card a turn, but if you lower the curve and play threats faster you might find card drawing offsets any drawback of playing your hand faster. Something to consider.

Red has so many cheap burn effects that the morph guy just seems awful. Has psychological edge with the 1-of Akroma, but at that point you might as well just run 4 Zoetic Cavern in your land slot instead of wasting creatures/removal on a really awful card. Flametongue Kavu, Ghitu Slinger, Ember Hauler and so many others are better creature+burn combos.

Vault Skirge is also miles better than Brass Gnat. 2 damage is nothing compared to having to spend mana every turn to untap the Gnat. Especially nothing when Lifelink can gain the life back.

Re: My semicasual/semicompetitive budget Legacy decks

I made some changes in my black deck.

First of all, I realized Darksteel Axe doesn't perform enough for its equip cost. The beatdown plan with equipped Grimclaw Bats and Yotian Soldiers isn't that powerful as it seemed to be. The equip cost and Bats' pump cost work poorly together with other mana-intensive abilities, especially the recover cost and the morph cost . The second thing is that these abilities beg for some mana backup, so I decided to employ Blood Pets as additional 1-mana drop. So instead of Bats (out) and Yotians (to SB) I put Dross Golems in as main offensive weapon and Funeral Charms as support instead of Axes. Also without pumping, there is no reason for storage lands anymore. The complete decklist:

Re: My semicasual/semicompetitive budget Legacy decks

Game 1
On the play I hit Jace with Duress (saw 2 StP and lands only), then I lured both StP to my 1/1 creatures, resolved Augur, AI played blind topdecked CB, I destroyed his hand and won damage race with Dross Golem over his Snapcaster Mage.

Game 2
On the draw, the AI did nothing the 1st turn, I played Duress and hit Entreat the Angels, after that I started destroying his hand with multiple Augurs, but came under some pressure from Vendilion Clique and Mage. Killed Clique with Charm and with 3 1/1 outplayed the Mage. A turn before death opponent topdecked CB, but too late.

The AI's main mistakes were:
- keeping hands without countermagic and setup spells
- wasting StPs to insignificant 1/1s (Witch and Pet), Augur and Golem were more serious threats
- playing Snapcaster Mage as mere vanilla creature, but maybe there was nothing better to do under Augur's discard

Anyway, the deck works. Augurs + Grim Harvest are devastating vs control and I didn't have to use deck's full potential (e.g. make Snapcaster's ability fizzle with Faerie Macabre or control opponent's library using the Witch).

Re: My semicasual/semicompetitive budget Legacy decks

Searching in my box of crappy, unused cards, I think I found a golden nugget there: playset of Cry of Contrition. This card really fits into my black deck and pushes it over the edge. Thus, here is the updated decklist:

The deck is capable of destroying opponent's hand in a few turns while maintainig pressure, and Cry of Contrition's haunt can be triggered as fast effect during opponent draw step, together with Witch providing often double timewalk. Even the Witch alone is great in fighting tutors, CB/Top lock, Doomsday combos and stacked Miracle spells. Cry often allows to keep Augur in play now to block an early Goyf/Mongoose, while opponent can't block Golems. Whole sideboard is now focused on fighting fast aggro decks (Goblins, Elves, Stompy variants, WW variants, Affinity, Batterskull/Jitte decks) and quick big dudes cheated into play (Show and Tell, Natural Order), again with synergy from Cry of Contrition.

The strategy is obvious: mobilize rebels, i.e. Whipcorders and Knights of the Holy Nimbus (they can be quite annoying, especially when backed with Revoker). Then kill overwhelmed opponent with huge attack with Roar.

[edit] Although Ivory Giant's effect is excellent and decisive, without time counters manipulation is too slow, therefore Crusader works a bit better.

The idea is well-known already: use cycling to find enough mana and to put crudial pieces together, then use Haakon (likely upgraded with Ashes in play) to play cards from graveyard. There is also the infinite-growth combo with Haakon + Ashes + Carrion Feeder + Ornithopter, and other features. Even if disrupted with grave-hate, the deck can still operate as decent Black Weenie. The real fun is how it mocks BUG Delver and Miracles, although the AI makes sub-optimal decisions regularly.

The second one I have built for testing-against purposes. It is my version of Angel Stompy (White Weenie version) deck. A bit costy for my taste in real cards.